Co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, has bounced back to retake top spot as world richest man just few hours after he was overtaken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Shares of the online bookseller had increased as U.S. markets opened, and climbed as much as 2.9 percent just before noon in New York on Thursday, giving Bezos a net worth of $92.3 billion.
With investors bracing for the Seattle-based company to report second-quarter results after the close, the shares tumbled.
Gates returned to the top spot when he finished the day with a net worth of $89.8 billion while Bezos followed with $88.8 billion, according to Forbes and Bloomberg.
Bezos quit his job at a hedge fund to start his online bookselling website in a garage in Seattle in 1994.
He first featured on the 400 richest Americans list in 1998, a year after Amazon went public, with a $1.6 billion fortune.
Gates’ first inclusion in the billionaire’s list was in 1982 and he has been no. 1 for 18 of the past 23 years.
